Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members. JOHN BINDER

Monday, January 16, 2017

Obama golfed 333 times, most since Ike: President Obama earned his title as golfer in chief over eight years, becoming the first duffer who spent the most time on the greens since former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller, who keeps an accurate database on presidential movements and actions, said Obama has golfed 333 times during his eight years, the last few outings in Hawaii during the first family's Christmas vacation last month. AP Photo While many presidents since Eisenhower have golfed a lot, only Obama has come close to the estimated 800 times the World War II hero hit the links.

"Overall, share prices and profits of the big Wall Street banks are soaring, fueled by expectations of sharply higher profits under a new administration pledged to dismantle the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul and remove virtually all regulations restricting speculative activity and protecting investors and the general public from Wall Street fraud."US banks report massive fourth quarter profits

By Gabriel Black16 January 2017

Profits for the two largest US banks by assets surged in the fourth quarter, reflecting a rise in trading activity following the election victory of Donald Trump.

JPMorgan Chase profits increased 24 percent to $6.7 billion, while the bank’s revenue rose two percent to $24.3 billion, according to the quarterly earnings report released by the bank on Friday. The bank reported its best-ever fourth quarter trading business. It net income jumped 96 percent from a year earlier.

Bank of America’s fourth quarter profit shot up by 42 percent to $4.7 billion. The second largest US bank’s revenue climbed 2.1 percent to $20 billion, the result of a gain in interest income and loan growth.

Earnings for the country’s fourth largest bank by assets, Wells Fargo, fell 5.4 percent to $5.3 billion and revenue remained flat in the wake of a scandal over the bank’s practice of opening unauthorized customer accounts in order to meet aggressive sales targets.

Combined 2016 profits for Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo totaled $64.6 billion, some two percent higher than in 2015.

Overall, share prices and profits of the big Wall Street banks are soaring, fueled by expectations of sharply higher profits under a new administration pledged to dismantle the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul and remove virtually all regulations restricting speculative activity and protecting investors and the general public from Wall Street fraud.

The incoming Trump administration is also promising to sharply cut corporate taxes and personal income taxes for the wealthy. Its key economic posts are filled with Wall Street insiders, including Goldman Sachs alums named to at least five top positions. These include Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council, and longtime Goldman lawyer Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

US financial stocks have been on a tear since the November 8 election, with total gains for the 63 largest groups hitting $459 billion. The financial sector has headed up a general surge in stock prices, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average increasing 8.9 percent since Election Day and nearing the 20,000 mark. The US stock market is now valued at $26 trillion, the highest in history.

The Dodd-Frank law is a largely token measure that has done virtually nothing to rein in the type of speculative and fraudulent activity that led to the 2008 Wall Street crash. Nevertheless, the big US banks have denounced it and lobbied against provisions that require them to maintain a bigger capital reserve and others that minimally restrict their ability to gamble with depositors’ money.

And while the Obama administration worked systematically to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of the banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home foreclosures and other illicit activities.

Now the banks are confident they will not even face such token reprimands for their reckless and often criminal pursuit of super-profits.

Trump is also expected to offer massive tax breaks to companies that invest in government-sponsored infrastructure projects. A spurt in growth and an anticipated rise in interest rates promise to increase the opportunities for the banks to realize higher returns.

This Trump boom will make the inevitable bursting of the stock bubble that much more violent. The fundamentals of the European, East Asian and American economies remain weak, with very low rates of reinvestment.

The massive profits reported by the American banks contrast sharply with the situation in Europe. The total profits of the three largest US banks for 2016, $65 billion, exceeds the combined market value of Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, two of the largest European banks.

This reflects a sharp decline in the position of European banks relative to their US rivals in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Share prices for major European banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UniCredit are below their pre-2008 levels.

HSBC laundered hundreds of millions and perhaps

billions of dollars for drug cartels responsible for

the deaths of tens of thousands of people over the

past two decades. The bank transferred at least

$881 million of known drug trafficking

proceeds, including money from the Sinaloa Cartel

in Mexico, which is known for dismembering

its victims and publicly displaying their body parts.

THE DEMISE AND ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION of HILLARY CLINTON

"Hillary Clinton is a known liar, a criminal of monstrous proportions; others have gone to prison for crimes she has committed over and over: lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, violating national security laws by which she was bound as Secretary of State, etc. It's a long list."

Clinton, the candidate favored by most of Wall Street and the corporate elite and large sections of the Republican Party establishment, is seeking to assemble something akin, within the framework of the US political setup, to a grand coalition between the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership.

Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton speeches to Wall Street bankers, for which shereceived six-figure paychecks, show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping cuts toSocial Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’ health benefits; and huge cuts in income taxes for the wealthy and corporate taxes.

“But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now.”

Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested

administration!

BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY! “Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.”

MUCH MORE HERE:

“As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping

executive pay at bailed-out firms.”

“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in prison.”

By Nick Beams14 January 2017

The year 2016 was characterised politically by the emergence of deep hostility to the official political and economic establishment as a result of rising social inequality. This was manifested most sharply in the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, with right-wing nationalist forces being the main beneficiaries to date due to the reactionary anti-working class policies of what passes for the political “left.”

This shift has found expression in a warning sounded by the World Economic Forum, which hosts its annual gathering of world business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland next week. The annual “risks report” prepared for the meeting concludes that the growing concentration of income and wealth at the very top of society is the biggest single risk to the stability of the economic and political order over which the millionaires and billionaires assembling in Davos preside. The report identifies “rising income and wealth inequality” as the most significant force driving global politics over the next decade.

The report cites the weakness of the economic “recovery” following the financial crisis of 2008 as one of the reasons for the anti-establishment backlash, but warns that boosting growth is not sufficient to shore up the credibility of the capitalist system.

There is a need to revive growth, “but the growing mood of anti-establishment populism suggests we may have passed the stage where this alone would remedy fractures in society: reforming market capitalism must also be added to the agenda,” the report states.

It continues: “The combination of economic inequality and political polarization threatens to amplify global risks, fraying the social solidarity on which the legitimacy of our economic and political systems rest.”

The report notes that the policy of quantitative easing by the world’s central banks—the pumping of trillions of dollars into the global financial system—has “exacerbated income inequality” by boosting “the returns enjoyed by the owners of financial assets, while workers’ real earnings have been growing very slowly.”

Productivity growth has been slow to recover from the crisis and structural rates of unemployment remain high, particularly among young people in Europe, while in the United States there has been a marked decline in the labour participation rate, signifying that large numbers of workers are dropping out of the workforce.

The report points out that “in contrast to the pre-crisis era, when China’s rapid expansion bolstered overall growth rates, there is no market game-changer on the horizon,” with China in a gradual slowdown as its economy moves away from investment-led growth.

“In sum, it is difficult to identify routes that will lead back to robust global rates of economic growth,” the Davos report concludes.

In line with other studies, the report points to rising inequality in the US, with the incomes of the top 1 percent rising by 31 percent between 2009 and 2012 compared to less than 0.5 percent for the rest of the population.

“Middle-class income stagnation,” it states, “is particularly affecting youth; recent research shows that 540 million young people across advanced economies face the prospect of growing up to be poorer than their parents.”

In examining longer-term trends, the report dwells on the impact of new technologies associated with the advance of computerisation and the Internet. According to one study it cites, some 47 percent of jobs in the United States are at risk from automation, affecting more than 80 percent of low-income work.

“Technology is also contributing to the changing nature of work, with secure and predictable jobs giving way to more sporadic and short-term self-employment,” with research suggesting that the number of people in so-called “alternative work arrangements” in the US increased faster than overall employment between 2005 and 2015.

In fact, the rate at which this is taking place is increasing. A recent study has found that 94 percent of the 10 million jobs created during the Obama administration were temporary, contract or part-time positions, with the proportion of the workforce engaged in such occupations rising from 10.7 percent to 15.8 percent. The number of full-time jobs today is 1 million below the level at the start of the recession.

The increased use of technology provides the material foundation for the advance of living standards. But under the profit system, it is the means for driving down the living standards of the mass of the population.

According to statistics prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and cited in the World Economic Forum report, up to 80 percent of the decline in labour’s share in national income between 1990 and 2007 was the result of the impact of technology. This trend will only have accelerated in the past decade.

The report warns that one way in which technological change could prove disruptive is via the labour market, with incomes pushed down and unemployment pushed up in affected sectors and regions, leading to “disruptive” social conditions. This is in line with the overall finding of the report that “the most important of global risks is the pairing of unemployment and social instability.”

While pointing to the rise of populist and nationalist movements, the report does not offer much in the way of in-depth analysis. But it does at least indicate one of the most significant factors, noting that “the economic policies of historically mainstream parties from the right and the left have converged in recent decades,” making it possible for “once-fringe movements” to rise by “portraying the established parties as part of the same technocratic political class, focused on self-enrichment.”

The overriding fear of the World Economic Forum, though not stated explicitly in the report, is that popular opposition will shift to the left. As other commentators have noted in this, the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, there is a parallel between the conditions that prevailed a century ago and those of today.

Summing up its findings, the report concludes that it is a “febrile time for the world,” where “deep-rooted social and economic trends are manifesting themselves disruptively across the world,” and “persisting inequality, particularly in the context of comparative economic weakness, risks undermining the legitimacy of market capitalism.”

The World Economic Forum, which begins in the alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, will involve the usual round of networking by business chiefs, political leaders and the heads of NGOs, as lucrative deals are made and relationships established. Of course, it will produce no solutions to the deepening social, political and economic malaise. How could it, as the forces gathered there preside over the very social order that has produced the crisis?

But for the global elites, the taste of the champagne, the delicacy of the canapés and the flavour of the haute cuisine may be somewhat tainted by the smell of death wafting up from the grave opening up before them.

The chief motivating factor behind the rise on Wall Street is the understanding that the incoming Trump administration will not only carry out policies to benefit the financial elites, but that responsibility for implementing this agenda will be in the hands of some its foremost representatives.

TRUMP VOWS TO KEEP OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTING

MNUCHIN: THE FORECLOSURE MACHINE!

The FDIC paid OneWest $1 billion, which Stein said went to “billionaire investors … to cover the close of foreclosing on working class, everyday American folks.”

“But the bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin's $26.5 million home in he wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest's eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times.”

TRUMP VOWS TO SERVE THE RICH WITH SUPER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS!

There is a vast chasm between this empty populist rhetoric and the personnel that Trump has selected to populate his government. The speech followed a series of cabinet picks, including billionaire asset strippers, Wall Street bankers, and dedicated opponents of financial and corporate regulations, public education and Medicare and Medicaid, to lead the Treasury, Commerce, Education and Health and Human Services departments.

THE TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET

FIRST

OBAMA –CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH

"Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of

income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one percent."

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

Eight men own same as poorest half of world: Oxfam

London (AFP) – Eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population, a level of inequality which “threatens to pull our societies apart”, Oxfam said on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum opening in Davos.

The wealth of the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people is the equivalent to the combined net worth of six American businessmen, one from Spain and another from Mexico.

Oxfam pointed to a link between the vast gap between rich and poor and growing discontent with mainstream politics around the world.

“From Brexit to the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a worrying rise in racism and the widespread disillusionment with mainstream politics, there are increasing signs that more and more people in rich countries are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo,” Oxfam said in its new report, “An economy for the 99 percent”.

The charity said new data on wealth distribution from countries such as India and China had prompted it to revise its own calculation, having said a year ago the wealth of half the world’s population was in the hands of 62 people.

Inequality will be among the issues topping the agenda as the world’s political and business elite meet in Davos from Tuesday until Friday, when 3,000 people will gather for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“Responsive and responsible leadership” has been chosen as the theme of the summit, which organisers said was a response to a “backlash against globalisation leading to two surprising vote results and a rise in populism in the West”.

In its report Oxfam called for an increase in tax rates targeting “rich individuals and cooperations”, as well as a global agreement to end competition between countries to lower corporate tax rates.

The charity also condemned lobbying by corporations and the closeness of business and politics, calling for mandatory public lobby registries and stronger rules on conflicts of interest.

"Food stamps have also become a major moneymaking market for some of America’s biggest banks."

"Profiting from poverty was apparently an 'important business' for JP Morgan."

Food Stamps: $1.3 Billion Spent on Junk Food, Soft Drinks, Says Study

AP

Americans use food stamps to buy more than $600 million worth of “sweetened beverages,” and bought hundreds of millions more of junk food and sugary snacks, according to a report published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Overall, food stamps worth nearly $1.3 billion were spent on “sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar,” which accounted for about 20 cents of every dollar spent on food items purchased by 26.5 million households in 2011, saidthe report.

The USDA administers the $74 billion food stamp program, also known as SNAP or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

The report compared spending patterns between SNAP and non-SNAP households and found that “sweetened beverages,” which includes fruit juices, energy drinks, and sweetened teas, accounted for nearly 10 percent of the total amount of money spent on food.

“In this sense, SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry,” Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York UniversitytoldtheNew York Times. “It’s pretty shocking.”

Overall, SNAP users spent 22.8 percent of their benefit on sugary drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, sugar, plus jams and sweets, and only 11.9 percent on fruits and vegetables. Families that don’t use the SNAP program spent 20 percent of their funds on those sweet items, and 16.3 percent on fruits and vegetables.

The multi-billion dollar, taxpayer funded food stamps program has become increasingly controversial thanks, in part, to itsmassive growthunder President Obama.

More than 10.7 million more Americans — a 32 percent jump — have become reliant on food stamps to feed themselves since Obama took office in 2009, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And in that time, countless studies have been published and health experts have warned that restrictions are needed to curtail food stamp use to purchase unhealthy foods. Government watchdog groups have also called for tighter regulations as food stamp fraud remains a common and costly problem.

Food stamps have also become a major moneymaking market for some of America’s biggest banks.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been made by a handful of banks that help the U.S. government process payments to food stamps recipients.

“Since 2004, 18 of 24 states who contract with J.P. Morgan to provide welfare benefits have contracted to pay $560,492,596.02,” theGAI investigationrevealed. “New York alone has a seven-year contract worth $126,394,917.”

Profiting from poverty was apparently an “important business” for JP Morgan.

“This business is a very important business to JP Morgan,” Christopher Paton, the company’s former managing director of treasury services,toldBloomberg News in 2011. “It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale. We also regard it as very important in the sense that we are delivering a very useful social function. We are a key part of this benefit delivery mechanism. Right now volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years or so … The good news from JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”

The president-elect has indicated that he wants to make cuts to various welfare programs and the Republican platform promises to separate the food stamps program from the Farm Bill, where SNAP funding is currently derived.

January 27, 2017

Why Mexico will pay for the wall

The debate around Donald Trump's wall has been shaped by liberal and media narratives that focus on illegal immigrants in the U.S. The left has painted a picture of compassion for these immigrants, making them the entirety of the story. Sanctuary cities have declared safe havens for illegal immigrants, without really distinguishing between the good and the bad among them. They have also spun numbers about temporarily declining immigration rates to diminish the significance of the problem. Liberals have labeled opponents of open borders hard-hearted racists. Immigration has become one of those narrative stories, filled with human suffering, compassion, and demonized enemies, that liberals love to love.

What liberals have ignored is the severe consequences of slack U.S. borders for Mexico. Mexican society and the Mexican economy have been severely distorted and held hostage for decades by criminal gangs that make their living smuggling drugs and migrants into the U.S. Their access to and control over the U.S. border are precisely what has brought them power and wealth, while unleashing a long-term scourge on Mexican society. These gangs murder, kidnap, and extort innocent Mexican citizens. They corrupt the Mexican police and military. They transport illegal migrants to the U.S. – extorting, exploiting, raping, and murdering them along the way. They transport drugs to the U.S., undermining our civil society and killing our citizens. They instill fear and violence across Mexican society, preventing it from achieving the stable, middle-class society that NAFTA promised. These truths are well documented in news reports, testimony from ranchers who own border land, and movies.

Where is liberals' compassion, in their self-absorption and attachment to their own narratives, for the honest citizens of Mexico who are victimized in their own country by the criminal gangs fostered and financed by open U.S. borders?

Liberals have a narrative about the tons of illegal drugs these gangs transport into the U.S., too. It goes something like this: we did drugs when we were young (Choomer Obama), and it didn't harm us. Look at us now: we're running things, and isn't the world a better place? Those deplorables dying of heroin overdoses in flyover country? The real problem is the War on Drugs. If only we legalized and taxed drugs, unfortunates could get drugs easily and wouldn't have to go into debt and commit crimes to finance their habits. With the taxes, we could finance more social programs. The people who can't control themselves? We can medicalize their addictions and give them unlimited health care.

Shutting down the U.S. border will reduce or eliminate the power and wealth of these criminal gangs and their stranglehold over Mexican society. Once they no longer have access to the U.S. border, they will no longer have access to the source of their wealth and power.

Trump's wall will eliminate the reign of terror under which Mexico's honest citizens have lived for a long time. The benefits that a wall will bring to Mexican civil society and to law and order should be reasons for liberals to support Trump's wall. These benefits are also why Mexico, once it has overcome the perceived affront to its dignity, will gladly pay.

Shutting down the U.S. border will also dramatically reduce the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S., with all their negative economic and social consequences.

I'm waiting for a liberal to argue against these benefits, but I haven't found one yet.

CAUTION!

HERE IS THE MEXICO POURING OVER OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS AND HAULING BACK BILLIONS FROM HEROIN SALES!

GRAPHIC IMAGES of America coming under Mex Occupation

The NARCOMEX drug cartels now operate in all major American cities and haul back to NARCOMEX between $40 top $60 BILLION from sales of HEROIN!

REMITTANCES ….. are only part of Mexico’s

looting… and billions for anchor baby breeders,

billions for heroin sales and then do the numbers!

Mexicans abroad sent home nearly $2.4 billion in transfers in November, 24.7 percent higher than a year earlier, marking their fastest pace of expansion since March 2006, according to Mexican central bank data on Monday…